


we'll just keep each other

by dinosaur



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Domestic, Established Relationship, Magical Realism, Other, Pets, Sharing a Bed, Transgender Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7969195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s at the door, now. The spells on the locks perk up to Harry’s touch, hair raising on Niall’s arms. Harry touches gently, and it echos a caress across Niall’s shoulders.</p><p>There’s something disarmingly intimate about giving someone the keys to your magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll just keep each other

**Author's Note:**

> response to a prompt for bed sharing from the [acelets](wepush.tumblr.com/tagged/acelets) & [nonsexual intimacy meme](http://wepush.tumblr.com/post/149234655650/) on tumblr. 
> 
> harry is a trans girl with she/her pronouns and niall is a trans babe with zhe/hir pronouns. they are both ace. magic is kind.
> 
> title from run by daughter.

 

 

 

It’s 3 AM when a tug on the house’s outmost protection spells pulls Niall awake. The aircon has gone on too long and the bedroom is still with cold. Honeydew is curled up on the end of the sheets, nose tucked under the safety of her own tail. Niall watches her breathe for a moment, lulled by the rhythm of her small body, before shaking it off to reach out to the spell line. 

Hir magic is slow, lethargic in the pit of hir stomach and it takes a moment to register what aura is moving distantly in the grounds. The person’s magic is soft, lavender to Niall’s hands, but hard petrified wood to hir spine, swirled, layered in a well-rounded, long body. Their shape comes clear in the sea of Niall’s home-ground magic. 

 _Harry_. 

Niall smiles and tucks up the corners of the protection spells behind Harry as she goes. Zhe rolls over into the bed, cuddles into hirself. 

Harry’s at the door, now. The spells on the locks perk up to Harry’s touch, hair raising on Niall’s arms. Harry touches gently, and it echos a caress across Niall’s shoulders. 

There’s something disarmingly intimate about giving someone the keys to your magic. 

But it’s  _Harry_ , and she presses against Niall’s magic with her fingertips, like it’s worth taking care with, like it’s home and Niall’s not sure zhe’d have it any other way. 

Niall lets the locks tumble open, whispers a light to the hallway candle for Harry to see by. 

Harry’s aura brushes against hirs, thankful. She laughs a soft joy at the smell of ocean and breeze as she redoes the locks carefully, accent chary over the Gaelic. Niall brushes back a thank you. 

Zhe floats a bit, surrounded by waves of blankets and the rolling tide of Harry tiptoeing off her boots and up the winding stairs to the loft. 

“Cold,” Harry whispers, as she lights on the landing. 

“Mm,” Niall says. 

Zhe flicks over the corner of the blanket with a small magic of  _here_.

Clothes drop to the ground, a whisper of “Honeydew, my honeydoggie dew,” curls under a kissing sound and then the sheets gap around a column of brittle air. Rolling hir eyes closed, Niall curls tighter.

A second later, Harry presses into hir, soft and solid and  _hard_. It makes Niall’s eyes open to the dark. Zhe plays the sting of Harry’s arousal over hir tongue, the unique taste of it. The burning feeling of her cock is foreign against the small of Niall’s back, but zhe feels no need to move back into it.

“Mm?” Niall asks.

“Just an incubus spelling,” Harry says, sounding bored by her own body.

Harry, Niall thinks with a yawn, has strict lines between work and home. 

Sex is for the former, for providing a service and professional joy at a job well done. She’s a dreammaker and that means a host of roles, a basket of potions. At home, sex is a vacant disinterest contrasted with a resounding delight in Niall’s knobby knees strung over strong thighs. And of biting Niall’s shoulders a lot.

“Kay,” Niall mumbles into the pillow, closing hir eyes. “W’s g’night?”

Harry kisses just behind hir ear, “Yeah, was good. Made dreams come true.”

“S’what y’do,” Niall agrees.

Harry laughs softly. “Gonna wash off the spell.” She runs a finger down the s of Niall’s spine. “Be here when I get back?”

“B’as’eep, mayb. Wake m’?”

“Kay,” Harry kisses at hir head, catching the top of hir ear, and then slips out of the sheets again. 

Listening to Harry floating back down the stairs, clicking the loo light, humming to herself, is a lullaby. Niall swirls slowly in the pennywhistle combination of them together, their magic curling overtop each other in the house like Honeydew on their sheets.

Minutes tumble away from hir. 

Harry clambers back into bed and Niall pops awake as she immediately wiggles close. 

“Don’t –” Niall tries.

Harry presses her freezing feet to hir calves. 

“Fucker,” Niall hisses and slings a bite of electricity at her cheek.

She jumps and nearly elbows hir side.

“Har _ry_.”

“Ni _all_.”

“I said wake, not try to kill.” Niall glares over hir shoulder at her.

Harry’s rubbing at her face, feet warming up a bit as she winds and rubs them over Niall’s skin. Zhe huffs. 

“Jus’ wanna be close,” she mumbles, against the heel of her own palm.

Niall closes hir eyes. Honeydew wuffles, unhappy in sleep and Harry pushes up to murmur to her. She quiets and Harry lingers, the near-silent sounds of her long fingers curling and twisting comfort into Honeydew’s messy fur. The air grows heavy from sweetness for a moment with the edges of the spell Harry settles on Honeydew’s nose. A moment later, she settles back down behind Niall, an arm’s span away, feet tucked safely on her side of the bed.

For a split second, Niall hates that, hates so fiercely that Harry should have a side of the bed, instead of just _the bed_.

Niall blinks open hir eyes to the wavering shadows of the bedroom. Harry’s left the candle on downstairs, maybe added one or two and the effect against the top of the rafters mimics a scale of violin strings plucked in the light.

Zhe breathes out lightly, hears Harry echo hir.

Niall turns over to Harry.

She looks floppy, damp with a shower and curls unwrestled and charm free. It’s always sharp to see her so bare, without flowers or trappings of a dream. In the dancing dark, she is an oak sapling.

Niall longs to press hir mouth to the cradle of her collar and breathe in the honey of her bones.

Her eyes peek open, all pupil and no iris.

“I like being close with you,” Niall whispers.

Harry blinks at hir, too fast.

Niall nods hir head against the pillow.

“S’just cold feet,” Harry mumbles, eventually.

 _Just_.

Niall breathes in honey and Harry and the lingering herbs of the incubus spelling.

“Just hate the cold, Harry,” Niall reminds, soft but firm.

“You’ve got the chaud charm going, though. Y’always do.”

And Niall does. Harry knows this, knows Niall and the magic that lines hir bones and traces invisible runes and protections across hir skin. But Harry doesn’t know –

Niall turns hir face into the pillow, hopes zhe comes out muffled, “You bleed through it, under it.”

Harry stills, aura going still against Niall’s, breath held.

“What?”

Niall pulls the pillow over hir head and makes an indiscriminate sound into its fine, lemon balm microfibers.

“Ni,” Harry runs her fingers over Niall’s curled over the top of the pillow.

“What.” It comes out like ‘ _whhu.’_

Harry tsks softly and nibbles on hir fingers. The slick of Harry’s teeth puts a shiver down Niall’s spine.

“Niall,” Harry says softer, and her voice rumbles low, a line of magic in it. Niall knows if zhe pulled off the pillow, the lights on the ceiling would be flickering, flaring in script suspiciously like Harry’s lofty sentence case. The same way zhe knows that Harry’s close, propped over hir body, soft muscles beginning to tremble.

Hands tug a tiny bit at the pillow, and Niall lets it go, lets Harry draw it off and up, flaring up Niall’s hair as it goes. Harry tugs hir down by the hip a bit so none of Niall’s face is hidden by the fabric. Tucking her arms flat under Niall’s puts them nose to nose, and Harry uses it to her advantage, leaning forward to smush their noses together a bit. Niall smiles without giving hir face permission to.

“H,” Niall whispers.

Harry’s eyes are so close Niall is having trouble focusing on both of them. “Does it feel this close?”

Niall closes hir eyes, but Harry’s breath is still on hir face, Harry’s body is still pressed soft and tight to hirs. The warmth between them feels strong enough to stand against the sea.

“Do you always,” Harry breathes, “Feel me this close?”

Niall opens hir eyes so zhe can _look_ , can watch the light reflect over the layer of magic in Harry’s eyes, can see her curls sway in gravity. Harry’s arms are trembling against the underside of Niall’s shoulders.

“No,” Niall says, softly.

The magic in Harry’s eyes flickers, a moue of hesitation across her pink lips.

Niall lets the air trickle from hir lungs, “No,” zhe says, leaning up to press hir lips to Harry’s, murmurs against her plush mouth, “But sometimes. Most times.”

All the times Niall tries to draw the lacey drapes of cold back from hir, without looking to the warmth of Harry on the other side of the window. All the times they’re here, like this.

Sometimes, rarely, when they’re cities and spells apart. An impossible, glowing truth. A beautiful fragile string of magic, somehow standing against the wind.

“Oh,” Harry says against Niall’s lips.

“All the times I could want,” Niall says, assures, explains. Zhe brushes hir thumbs against Harry’s pudgy, pudgy hips. “All the times it matters,” zhe confesses.

The burn of Harry’s magic tips her skin flushed. She closes her eyes for moment as she gasps and pulls the sheet taut around them. The tremble of magic is enticing against Niall’s skin, nearly the same as when Harry slips into a blue moon shower with Niall, presses their scarred and soft bodies together with a twisting sluice of magical null between them. Niall shivers and Harry echoes it. When Harry pulls the magic back enough to see around, her eyes are rouge stars.

“I love,” Harry pauses, curls a hand around and over Niall’s cheek to press a finger to hir bottom lip, sticky in the lingering slickness from Harry’s own mouth. “I love,” she swallows.

The smile feels gentle as it stretches Niall’s lips.

“I know,” zhe says simply.

Because just as surely as Niall’s own magic is affected by Harry’s, Harry’s is affected by Niall’s. Just as surely as Niall can’t help reaching out to the flame of Harry’s aura, prickling hir senses and letting Harry kiss hir fingers better – there’s Harry, here, in Niall’s space, breathing unsteady with the rolling tide of Niall’s homegrown magic, letting Niall balance her spine.

There’s a brilliant security in the shape of them, them as a _them_ , against the night. Niall pulls Harry close and lets the push and pull between them form mountains against the bespelled horizon that flattens east and west around them.

Harry’s temple touches Niall’s, their pulses beating towards each other.

Harry kisses Niall’s cheek sloppily, tongue pressing against hir skin. Trying to taste the trace of sun in the smattering of freckles across Niall’s face, zhe knows.

“Not gon’ taste much, H,” Niall whispers.

Harry presses more of her tongue to the skin, determined. Her magic is ticklish almost, trailing from the heat of Harry’s mouth to the landscape of Niall’s body.

It’s gross and endearing.

Harry presses the very tip of her tongue to Niall’s nose and wraps her lips around. They’re still moisturized from her night cream and Niall giggles at the combination of sensations. Harry giggles too and nearly bites hir nose off.

Niall runs a finger tail along the long stretchmark that curls over Harry’s left hipbone, soft like ivy.

Harry rumbles, and draws off to press her lips to the waiting cup of Niall’s sternum, magic reverberating deep in hir bones. Zhe opens her aura as wide as it can go and feels brewed full with their magic.

“How come?” Harry asks, muddled as she bubbles with the force of them too.

“’Come what?”

“How come you didn’t tell me b’fore?” Harry mumbles into the side of Niall’s neck, ducks away from hir eyes.

The joy, the longing, the want to celebrate this about them zings in the magic open between them. Harry has always had a no regrets pace where they are concerned.

Niall sighs softly, ruffling Harry’s curls and then tugging fingers through them to roll them away.

Why didn’t Niall tell her that her magic had already made a home of Niall’s body long before Niall had let Harry?

“Not all of me,” Niall leans her head against Harry’s, “is yours, petal. Not all of my things are ours.”

Harry makes a quiet sound against hir neck.

Niall waits.

Harry’s breathing is shallow, but her hold – meta, physical – is deep. Niall laces hir fingers in her hair again, swirls circles into ringlets. The tension draws from Harry’s body slowly, and she slides down Niall’s side until her nose is pressed between Niall and the mattress, stretching her body to cover and cling. A small wuffle signals Harry tucking her feet under Honeydew’s safe stomach.

Niall keeps hir hands touching and her aura active, willing Harry, _you get this, this you get, this is ours._

Harry weaves into it, cold rings, cold nose, warm hands, warm magic.

Eventually, Harry mumbles, "I like what I get though,” she sighs against Niall’s shoulder happily, “I like it a lot."

Niall smiles and feels like crying for one sharp, lovely moment.

Zhe stares at the ceiling and then closes her eyes.

“I love that you get it what you get, too.”

“Love you,” Harry says, and kisses Niall’s skin.

And that’s really all there is, isn’t there.

Niall pulls the blanket up around them and locks them in for the night.

 

 

 


End file.
